| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: with fine elements of farce in it too, which repay a man in
passing, involving many dark and many moonlight rides, secret
counsels which are at once divulged, sealed letters which are
read aloud in confidence to the neighbours, and a mass of
fudge and fun, which would have driven me crazy ten years
ago, and now makes me smile.
On Friday, Henry came and told us he must leave and go to 'my
poor old family in Savaii'; why? I do not quite know - but,
I suspect, to be tattooed - if so, then probably to be
married, and we shall see him no more. I told him he must do
what he thought his duty; we had him to lunch, drank his
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: "What is the use of that!" she said, throwing away the bandage. "If he
does not love me, if he hates me, it is all over."
She waited for one look, did not obtain it, and fell, half dead. The
mulatto cast a glance at Henri, so horribly significant, that, for the
first time in his life, the young man, to whom no one denied the gift
of rare courage, trembled. "/If you do not love her well, if you give
her the least pain, I will kill you/." such was the sense of that
brief gaze. De Marsay was escorted, with a care almost obsequious,
along the dimly lit corridor, at the end of which he issued by a
secret door into the garden of the Hotel San-Real. The mulatto made
him walk cautiously through an avenue of lime trees, which led to a
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: receive all forms should have no form; as in making perfumes they first
contrive that the liquid substance which is to receive the scent shall be
as inodorous as possible; or as those who wish to impress figures on soft
substances do not allow any previous impression to remain, but begin by
making the surface as even and smooth as possible. In the same way that
which is to receive perpetually and through its whole extent the
resemblances of all eternal beings ought to be devoid of any particular
form. Wherefore, the mother and receptacle of all created and visible and
in any way sensible things, is not to be termed earth, or air, or fire, or
water, or any of their compounds or any of the elements from which these
are derived, but is an invisible and formless being which receives all
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: the greatest of our boasted improvements and discoveries have come from
such trifling hints.
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;--they are the life, the soul
of reading!--take them out of this book, for instance,--you might as well
take the book along with them;--one cold eternal winter would reign in
every page of it; restore them to the writer;--he steps forth like a
bridegroom,--bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to
fail.
All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management of them, so as to
be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author, whose
distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable: For, if he begins a
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